Philosophical Speculations

With this writing I would like to use the opportunity to communicate the core of Steiners epistemological work, too intellectually thinking friends. Some of them are scientific minded people, some are dogmatic religious. But it’s mostly the same way of thinking. I want to introduce them into esoteric topics. They are in may age 20-23, and are really interested in such topics. I would like to get your comments and feedback. I don’t know if my writing style is good and understandable. If there are things that i could elaborate more or in a better way I would be more than happy for your comments.
I wrote a similar „mini“ essay last year, but it’s not sufficient.
And I will try to write more parts of this essay to dig deeper into these topics.
viewtopic.php?t=950

(I wrote it in German so there could be much grammatical errors)

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Man is a thinking being, thinking is the ability of his spirit.
I ask the reader, when he hears the term spirit, not to roll his eyes right away, because I am not talking about something metaphysical here, but refer through the word, to concrete contents of consciousness. The word spirit serves only as a symbol to indicate our thinking and recognizing activity. I ask the reader to put aside all the assumptions he has formed about the world, at least for a short time of several minutes.

Man as a thinking being, is confronted by a visual world, which is in constant metamorphosis. In addition to the images, there are sounds, feelings, smells, sensations and other consciousness contents. These are continually transforming.
We as thinking beings become aware of the phenomena of our consciousness, because we recognize them through our imaginary concepts. Through our thinking we recognize the characteristics of our perception, through the concepts we form with our thinking. Without the ability of thinking, the contents of perception, which we call the world, would be an unrecognizable and incoherent collection of different qualities (colors, smells ....).

Through our thinking, we begin to differentiate the contents of perception, and to find their relationship to each other.
It is through our thinking we recognize the world.
So the reality, when we omit all our assumptions about the world, and focus on our state of consciousness, as it seems to us, is conditioned by two different categories.

On the one hand, through our perception, which we can call the given, the perceptions, as they enter our consciousness without our activity, and through our thinking activity, which understands the perception, differentiates it and finds the relation of the precepts, i.e. thus, permeates it with understanding.
This symbiosis, from the given, and our own, thinking (spiritual) activity, we call knowledge.

When we have recognized, i.e. have combined the perceptions with the appropriate concepts, we have an understanding of the world (perceptions) and know how we can use our will to act in this world, to realize our intentions. I’ll explain the whole thing again with an example.

Imagine dear reader, you see a red something with a certain shape, which moves quickly through your surrounding environment .
If you have such a perception that you cannot categorize, it is like a disturbance in your world picture. You know all of your perceptions, and you are familiar with them and understand them, the perception of the red figure is unfamiliar to you.
What would you do if you had this perception?
You would look for a suitable term that explains this perception, and its relation to other perceptions.
If you don't have them, you're paralyzed, because you don't know if this thing is dangerous, and would attack.
Or whether it spreads a contagious disease when you touch it.

Only when you have the concept that explains the perception and the relationship to others, do you know how you must behave in order to realize (preserve) their ideal, for example that of physical health. So you can recognize, activate your will, which sets your body in motion to follow your ideals.

This should have sufficiently represented the importance of our own activity of thinking in making our contents of consciousness intelligible, in order to call it „the world“.
In summary, we live in a state of consciousness, which consists of qualitative perceptions that transform. We divide these and combine them, in which we ourselves become active, and through our thinking, produce suitable concepts that make these perceptions understandable to us. Then we can performe act of will.

This is what we can be sure of. We have described here the facts of our perception, without making any assumptions about the world, which we cannot confirm. At this point we are free of speculation, because we describe our own experience, which is everything we know, and which we can talk about. An assumption that belongs to the non-questioned ideas of our time, is that the world, as it appears to us, exists independently of us (the perceiving).

This is an unproven assumption. For we can only speak of a world if it is perceived in the consciousness of a thinking person.
A world outside of conscious, thinking perception is a hypothetical one that cannot be experienced, i.e. cannot be proven.
It is a conclusion, or rather a deductive statement, which cannot be verified. Even this hypothetical world, which exists independently of a thinking consciousness, is in turn in a thinking consciousness, which thinks this idea.

It is not possible to know something that exists outside of a thinking consciousness, even the assumption about such, exists only in and through the thinking consciousness. It is an abstract thought, which we have formed for certain reasons, and accept as an axiom. We can be safe when we describe our perception and the metamorphosis of the perception contents.
Today's form of thinking, which is used in science, abstract intellectual thinking, is based on the above-mentioned assumption that the world exists independently of us, "out there" and we form a model of this, "in here". As shown, this subject-object dualism is nothing more than a hypothesis that cannot be proven.
If we try in this way to answer the great questions, we will not get any further than to form different thoughts, which have no practical relevance to our lives, and are unprovable.

Our current explanations for the great questions of mankind are based on this way of thinking, which is full of unconfirmed assumptions and axioms. They are the beliefs of modern times.
Every body knows the following questions:“
What if the world is just a dream or a simulation? Can they prove otherwise?“ These questions are like the witnesses who prove that this form of thought is not able to penetrate the original ground of the world and to recognize it, but only to form plausible theories about it. In the end, no one knows exactly.

So is our aspiration, which we have to recognize our place as a being in the cosmos meaningless, because we can never get more than a theoretical thought construct, a plausible idea, which, however, is not clearly recognizable? Is our thinking, which is our only cognitive tool limited? Many would say that we can do no more than evoke plausible models through our thinking.
As we have seen, what we really know is that we have perceptions, and our thinking, which explains them. This is what makes up our state of consciousness. All other statements about the world as it really is are abstract and Unprovable assumptions.

Perhaps we should not close ourselves, and approach with an open mind the possibility that there are higher forms of knowledge than abstract intellectual thinking, which is based on beliefs.
Maybe their is a way to knowledge, which is really explaining the big questions of humanity in an undeniable way.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2024 11:12 pm With this writing I would like to use the opportunity to communicate the core of Steiners epistemological work, too intellectually thinking friends. Some of them are scientific minded people, some are dogmatic religious. But it’s mostly the same way of thinking. I want to introduce them into esoteric topics. They are in may age 20-23, and are really interested in such topics. I would like to get your comments and feedback. I don’t know if my writing style is good and understandable. If there are things that i could elaborate more or in a better way I would be more than happy for your comments.
I wrote a similar „mini“ essay last year, but it’s not sufficient.
And I will try to write more parts of this essay to dig deeper into these topics.
viewtopic.php?t=950

(I wrote it in German so there could be much grammatical errors)

—————————————————————————

Great job, Guney!
Shall we expect Part 2 where you tackle the questions with which you ended?

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 9:12 am

Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2024 11:12 pm With this writing I would like to use the opportunity to communicate the core of Steiners epistemological work, too intellectually thinking friends. Some of them are scientific minded people, some are dogmatic religious. But it’s mostly the same way of thinking. I want to introduce them into esoteric topics. They are in may age 20-23, and are really interested in such topics. I would like to get your comments and feedback. I don’t know if my writing style is good and understandable. If there are things that i could elaborate more or in a better way I would be more than happy for your comments.
I wrote a similar „mini“ essay last year, but it’s not sufficient.
And I will try to write more parts of this essay to dig deeper into these topics.
viewtopic.php?t=950

(I wrote it in German so there could be much grammatical errors)

—————————————————————————

Great job, Guney!
Shall we expect Part 2 where you tackle the questions with which you ended?

Thanks Cleric.
Yes, I will write a second part (maybe more than that).
But i will try to give an basic outline of how one can get more intimate knowledge about the world flow.
There is something ironic, because I couldn’t go deeper in the world flow then the knowledge of how certain ideas, emotions, and patterns, structure the world content (thoughts) from the “behind” so to say. In esoteric literature they are referred as elemental beings. But I can’t talk with honesty about higher beings etc .
So I need to find a way to talk in honesty about the deeper currents.
But the process of writing helps to get a better orientation.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2024 11:12 pm With this writing I would like to use the opportunity to communicate the core of Steiners epistemological work, too intellectually thinking friends. Some of them are scientific minded people, some are dogmatic religious. But it’s mostly the same way of thinking. I want to introduce them into esoteric topics. They are in may age 20-23, and are really interested in such topics. I would like to get your comments and feedback. I don’t know if my writing style is good and understandable. If there are things that i could elaborate more or in a better way I would be more than happy for your comments.
I wrote a similar „mini“ essay last year, but it’s not sufficient.
And I will try to write more parts of this essay to dig deeper into these topics.
viewtopic.php?t=950

(I wrote it in German so there could be much grammatical errors)

Nice introductory work, Guney!

As you said to Cleric, artistically explicating these things tremendously helps our inner orientation. I also have the impulse to share my writings with others, to get their 'foot in the door' to esoteric science, and clearly, I still do write to share them here and elsewhere, but at the same time I have learned not to expect much in the way of "results". Especially if I was sharing them with family or friends, which I don't go out of my way to do at this point. It is even difficult for many people who are already Anthroposophically oriented to become enthusiastically interested in such methodical phenomenological explorations. But by consistently working on our own intuitive orientation and real-time thinking skills, we also form the foundation from which we can help generate intuitive sparks in others when the time is right.

Related to this, I want to share something from Jeff Falzone that I have been wrestling with lately, for you or anyone else to weigh in. He has a big problem with the 'relationless aggregate' imagination of sensory impressions in PoF, which you alluded to here as well. Jeff suggests that, if we pay close attention to our experience, we never first find such a chaotic aggregate of colors, sounds, etc. which is not already permeated by cognitive meaning. Steiner stated this even more explicitly in GA 2 (in bold):

GA 2 wrote:What is experience? Every one is conscious of the fact that his thinking is kindled through collision with reality. Objects meet us in space and time; we become aware of an external world of many parts very highly complicated, and we live in a more or less richly elaborated inner world. The first form in which all this meets us is already fixed. We have no share in its coming to pass. It is as if springing forth from an unknown Beyond that reality first offers itself to the grasp of our senses and our minds. At first we can do nothing more than to permit our look to sweep over the multiplicity which meets us.

This first activity of ours is the grasp of the senses upon reality. We must grasp firmly what is offered to the senses, for it is only this that we can call pure experience.
...
Pure experience is that form of reality in which it appears to us when we meet it with the complete exclusion of ourselves.

It is to this form of reality that we may apply the words Goethe used in his essay entitled Nature: “We are surrounded and encircled by her. Unbidden and without warning, she takes us up in the round of her dance.”

As regards the objects of the external senses, this fact stares us in the face, so that it will scarcely be denied by any one. A body appears at first before us as a complex of forms, colors, sensations of heat and light, which are suddenly there as if they had come forth from a primal source to us quite unknown.

Jeff feels it couldn't be any clearer than this that Steiner is asserting any ordinary person who looks out at the phenomenal world will undeniably experience a relationless aggregate of impressions before they are structured by our concepts. I have offered various responses, and actually many recent essays have been centered around trying to address questions like these, but I won't mention them again here so as not to 'poison the well'. I am interested in hearing if anyone else wants to share what they think is going on here and how it helps us orient to our first-person phenomenal flow of cognitive experience.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 12:35 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2024 11:12 pm With this writing I would like to use the opportunity to communicate the core of Steiners epistemological work, too intellectually thinking friends. Some of them are scientific minded people, some are dogmatic religious. But it’s mostly the same way of thinking. I want to introduce them into esoteric topics. They are in may age 20-23, and are really interested in such topics. I would like to get your comments and feedback. I don’t know if my writing style is good and understandable. If there are things that i could elaborate more or in a better way I would be more than happy for your comments.
I wrote a similar „mini“ essay last year, but it’s not sufficient.
And I will try to write more parts of this essay to dig deeper into these topics.
viewtopic.php?t=950

(I wrote it in German so there could be much grammatical errors)

Nice introductory work, Guney!

As you said to Cleric, artistically explicating these things tremendously helps our inner orientation. I also have the impulse to share my writings with others, to get their 'foot in the door' to esoteric science, and clearly, I still do write to share them here and elsewhere, but at the same time I have learned not to expect much in the way of "results". Especially if I was sharing them with family or friends, which I don't go out of my way to do at this point. It is even difficult for many people who are already Anthroposophically oriented to become enthusiastically interested in such methodical phenomenological explorations. But by consistently working on our own intuitive orientation and real-time thinking skills, we also form the foundation from which we can help generate intuitive sparks in others when the time is right.

Related to this, I want to share something from Jeff Falzone that I have been wrestling with lately, for you or anyone else to weigh in. He has a big problem with the 'relationless aggregate' imagination of sensory impressions in PoF, which you alluded to here as well. Jeff suggests that, if we pay close attention to our experience, we never first find such a chaotic aggregate of colors, sounds, etc. which is not already permeated by cognitive meaning. Steiner stated this even more explicitly in GA 2 (in bold):

GA 2 wrote:What is experience? Every one is conscious of the fact that his thinking is kindled through collision with reality. Objects meet us in space and time; we become aware of an external world of many parts very highly complicated, and we live in a more or less richly elaborated inner world. The first form in which all this meets us is already fixed. We have no share in its coming to pass. It is as if springing forth from an unknown Beyond that reality first offers itself to the grasp of our senses and our minds. At first we can do nothing more than to permit our look to sweep over the multiplicity which meets us.

This first activity of ours is the grasp of the senses upon reality. We must grasp firmly what is offered to the senses, for it is only this that we can call pure experience.
...
Pure experience is that form of reality in which it appears to us when we meet it with the complete exclusion of ourselves.

It is to this form of reality that we may apply the words Goethe used in his essay entitled Nature: “We are surrounded and encircled by her. Unbidden and without warning, she takes us up in the round of her dance.”

As regards the objects of the external senses, this fact stares us in the face, so that it will scarcely be denied by any one. A body appears at first before us as a complex of forms, colors, sensations of heat and light, which are suddenly there as if they had come forth from a primal source to us quite unknown.

Jeff feels it couldn't be any clearer than this that Steiner is asserting any ordinary person who looks out at the phenomenal world will undeniably experience a relationless aggregate of impressions before they are structured by our concepts. I have offered various responses, and actually many recent essays have been centered around trying to address questions like these, but I won't mention them again here so as not to 'poison the well'. I am interested in hearing if anyone else wants to share what they think is going on here and how it helps us orient to our first-person phenomenal flow of cognitive experience.

I don’t know any way to prove this in another way, than trough the given example in the essay. When we confront an unknown phenomenona, we always try to grasp it trough concepts, in order to elucidate them.

I think one obstacle can be that we imagine the world out there, that we eludicate with our concepts trough thinking „inside of us“.

Another question I asked myself, is how our thinking activity, that confronts the WC, could know something of the world, if the world is devoid of meaning, or other than thinking (subject-object dualism)?

I would say that meaning is inherent to thinking, and can be grasped trough the crystallization in certain thought forms.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 1:15 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 12:35 pm

GA 2 wrote:What is experience? Every one is conscious of the fact that his thinking is kindled through collision with reality. Objects meet us in space and time; we become aware of an external world of many parts very highly complicated, and we live in a more or less richly elaborated inner world. The first form in which all this meets us is already fixed. We have no share in its coming to pass. It is as if springing forth from an unknown Beyond that reality first offers itself to the grasp of our senses and our minds. At first we can do nothing more than to permit our look to sweep over the multiplicity which meets us.

This first activity of ours is the grasp of the senses upon reality. We must grasp firmly what is offered to the senses, for it is only this that we can call pure experience.
...
Pure experience is that form of reality in which it appears to us when we meet it with the complete exclusion of ourselves.

It is to this form of reality that we may apply the words Goethe used in his essay entitled Nature: “We are surrounded and encircled by her. Unbidden and without warning, she takes us up in the round of her dance.”

As regards the objects of the external senses, this fact stares us in the face, so that it will scarcely be denied by any one. A body appears at first before us as a complex of forms, colors, sensations of heat and light, which are suddenly there as if they had come forth from a primal source to us quite unknown.

Jeff feels it couldn't be any clearer than this that Steiner is asserting any ordinary person who looks out at the phenomenal world will undeniably experience a relationless aggregate of impressions before they are structured by our concepts. I have offered various responses, and actually many recent essays have been centered around trying to address questions like these, but I won't mention them again here so as not to 'poison the well'. I am interested in hearing if anyone else wants to share what they think is going on here and how it helps us orient to our first-person phenomenal flow of cognitive experience.

I don’t know any way to prove this in another way, than trough the given example in the essay. When we confront an unknown phenomenona, we always try to grasp it trough concepts, in order to elucidate them.

I think one obstacle can be that we imagine the world out there, that we eludicate with our concepts trough thinking „inside of us“.

Another question I asked myself, is how our thinking activity, that confronts the WC, could know something of the world, if the world is devoid of meaning, or other than thinking (subject-object dualism)?

I would say that meaning is inherent to thinking, and can be grasped trough the crystallization in certain thought forms.

Right, but Jeff's objection is that for most of our daily experiences, we don't actually confront an incoherent swarm of sensory impressions and then go searching for the concepts to bring meaning to them. And he feels it is quite explicit that Steiner is asserting we do, for ex. in that quote, and much of the further exploration is then conditioned by this faulty assertion. In other words, he feels many Anthroposophists are importing a metaphysical assumption that our organization reduces meaningful intuition into chaotic sensory content that is 'given', on the one hand, and meaningful concepts that we bring forth through inner effort, on the other hand. Then the task is for human souls to restore the meaningful intuition by 'attaching' concepts to the perceptual content. He feels all of that is metaphysical speculation not supported by living experience.

For reference, my responses have generally been along the lines of:

1/ Steiner is giving us an aesthetic epistemology (as Seth Miller characterizes it) which does not provide first-order informational content about "how cognitive-perceptual experience works", so we can memorize the content and gain theoretical understanding, but uses that content as a symbolic portal for us to heighten sensitivity to our intuitive modulations in the process of understanding the content and working through the examples. It's not that the content is untrue, but that it serves a much deeper inner purpose that won't be readily apparent to the "ordinary observer" with default thinking habits (if it was so apparent to ordinary observation, there would be no need for the epistemology).

2/ We can more easily heighten sensitivity when we work with exceptional sensory situations, like a major disturbance in the otherwise normal flow of experience (for ex. a car accident), or cultural perceptions like a foreign language, complex mathematics, musical notation, etc. This allows us to more easily notice what is always the case for perceptual experience, but we are usually insensitive to it because our senses were educated with the appropriate concepts that give us a baseline orientation during our instinctive development. (sometimes I wonder whether it would have been helpful for Steiner to include some such examples)

3/ Steiner probably could have chosen some words better, who knows. One default thinking habit is to isolate a single sentence or paragraph from the whole 'thought-organism' in which it is found. That is a necessary step for turning artistic/imaginative expression of inner movements (second-order) into informational content (first-order). It's an inner movement that we all do to functionally navigate the sensory world. This movement carries over into our interaction with spiritual texts as well. We have to admit it's a lot easier to interact with the text in this way and get a 'grasp' on what is being communicated.

Then we say, "Well this sentence is clear enough, and I trust Steiner knew what he wanted to communicate, so I should take this at face value". Then we conclude, "But this isn't how an object stares me in the face, as an unintelligible complex of forms and colors, so Steiner must have been mistaken." That is all justified from any ordinary perspective, but the aim of these aesthetic epistemological works is precisely to lift us beyond the ordinary perspective and the ordinary habits.

But if we feel like it is 'cheating', a string of excuses to defend some assertion about our experience that Steiner clearly got wrong or bungled in some way, we will be best off if we say, "Yes, he got it wrong, he misspoke, etc., but the underlying polar relationship between perceptual content and intuitive movements that he is pointing to with such assertions is of infinite value to explore further and become more inwardly sensitive to, because in that relationship resides the most penetrating secrets of our existence." Most importantly we need to become sensitive to how this relationship holds for our thought-content by which we make sense of all other perceptual content. We should experience how this content is modulated by deeper intuitive movements.

That being said, I am sure there are other ways to approach this question and elucidate its function in orienting to the phenomenology of spiritual activity.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 12:35 pm Jeff feels it couldn't be any clearer than this that Steiner is asserting any ordinary person who looks out at the phenomenal world will undeniably experience a relationless aggregate of impressions before they are structured by our concepts. I have offered various responses, and actually many recent essays have been centered around trying to address questions like these, but I won't mention them again here so as not to 'poison the well'. I am interested in hearing if anyone else wants to share what they think is going on here and how it helps us orient to our first-person phenomenal flow of cognitive experience.

I wonder what he will say if asked for example what the experience is when he looks at, say, Arabic text (hopefully he doesn't know it). What he sees and what meaning he grasp? To me it's so unintelligible that I don't even know where one letter ends and where the other begins. Yet we can surely conceive that we can learn to differentiate them and attach the corresponding concepts. Who knows, maybe we even need to forge completely new concepts (I don't know anything about the Arabic writing system).

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 3:03 pm (sometimes I wonder whether it would have been helpful for Steiner to include some such examples)

3/ Steiner probably could have chosen some words better, who knows. One default thinking habit is to isolate a single sentence or paragraph from the whole 'thought-organism' in which it is found. That is a necessary step for turning artistic/imaginative expression of inner movements (second-order) into informational content (first-order). It's an inner movement that we all do to functionally navigate the sensory world. This movement carries over into our interaction with spiritual texts as well. We have to admit it's a lot easier to interact with the text in this way and get a 'grasp' on what is being communicated.

As these posts keep dripping with a soul quality opposite to humility, I remind of what Steiner warned about, for example here:


"In the case of an esotericist, or one who seriously undertakes a theosophical development, who makes Theosophy part of his life, his astral body lives a separate life; in the case of an ordinary human being it is not so free, not so independent. The astral body of a student going through development becomes detached and independent to some extent. It does not pass unconsciously into a sort of sleep, but becomes independent, and detached, going through in a different way what a human being usually does in sleep. It thereby enters the condition suited to it. In an ordinary man who lives in the exoteric world, this astral body is connected with the other bodies, and each exercises its special influence upon it. The individually pronounced quality of this human principle does not then come into notice. But when this astral body is torn out its special peculiarities assert themselves. And what are the peculiarities of the astral body? Now, my dear friends, I have often referred to this quality—perhaps, to the disgust of many who are sitting here. The quality peculiar to the human astral body on earth is egotism. When the astral body, apart from the influences which come from the other principles of human nature, asserts its own peculiar quality, this is seen to be egotism, or the effort to live exclusively in itself and for itself. This belongs to the astral body. It would be wrong, it would be an imperfection in the astral body as such, if it could not permeate itself with the force of egotism, if it could not say to itself, ‘Fundamentally I will attain everything through myself alone, I will do all that I do for myself, I will devote every care to myself alone.’ That is the correct feeling for the astral body. If we bear this in mind we shall understand that esoteric training may produce certain dangers in this direction. Through esoteric development, for instance, because this esoteric development must necessarily make the astral body somewhat free, those persons who take up a kind of Theosophy that is not very serious, without paying attention to all that true Theosophy wishes to give, will in the course of it specially call forth this quality of the astral body, which is egotism. It can be observed in many theosophical and occult societies that while selflessness, universal human love, is preached as a moral principle and repeated again and again, yet through the natural separation of the astral body egotism flourishes. Moreover, to an observer of souls it seems quite justifiable, and yet at the same time suspicious, when universal human love is made into a much-talked of axiom—observe that I do not say it becomes a principle, but that it is always being spoken of; for under certain conditions of the soul-life a person prefers most frequently to speak of what he least possesses, of what he notices that he most lacks, and we can often observe that fundamental truths are most emphasized by those who are most in want of them.


Universal human love ought without this to become something in the development of humanity which completely rules the soul, something which lives in the soul as self-evident, and concerning which the feeling arises: ‘I ought not to mention it so often in vain, I ought not to have it so often on my lips in a superfluous manner.’ Just as a well-known commandment says: Thou shalt not take the Name of God in vain ... so might the following be a commandment to a true and noble humanity: you ought not to utter so often in vain the requirement of the universal human love which is to become the fundamental feature of your souls, for if silence is in many cases a much better means of developing a quality than speech, it is particularly the case in this matter; quietly cultivating it in the heart, and not talking about it, is a far, far better means of developing universal brotherly love than continually speaking about it."

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA145/En ... 26p02.html

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 4:45 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 12:35 pm Jeff feels it couldn't be any clearer than this that Steiner is asserting any ordinary person who looks out at the phenomenal world will undeniably experience a relationless aggregate of impressions before they are structured by our concepts. I have offered various responses, and actually many recent essays have been centered around trying to address questions like these, but I won't mention them again here so as not to 'poison the well'. I am interested in hearing if anyone else wants to share what they think is going on here and how it helps us orient to our first-person phenomenal flow of cognitive experience.

I wonder what he will say if asked for example what the experience is when he looks at, say, Arabic text (hopefully he doesn't know it). What he sees and what meaning he grasp? To me it's so unintelligible that I don't even know where one letter ends and where the other begins. Yet we can surely conceive that we can learn to differentiate them and attach the corresponding concepts. Who knows, maybe we even need to forge completely new concepts (I don't know anything about the Arabic writing system).

That's a good example and I think I brought something similar up with him (maybe Chinese), but I'm not sure how he responded. Facebook doesn't make it easy to locate past comments.

I suppose he feels that there are certainly some perceptual structures that are mostly unknown and then we can permeate them with concepts, but even then he might say we start with the meaning of 'written language' or 'human creation', rather than a complete 'chaos' of sensory impressions. The absence of the latter is his big sticking point, which he feels is the plain meaning and intent of Steiner's assertions and too many Anthroposophists take it literally.

The toughest thing is to draw out of him what significance all this has for the broader project of Steiner's epistemology and spiritual science. He seems to feel the latter is mostly an arbitrary superstructure of concepts that aren't needed to properly orient to the experiential flow. For ex. when he responded to you that it is fine if we 'switch off' the etheric, astral, saturn, etc. - everything else would remain the same about experience. He has implied a similar way of thinking in recent FB comments. So I think the main thing is that he wants to encompass everything communicated as informational content about 'cognition-perception' and 'spiritual reality', rather than a means of sensitizing to the underlying intuitive gestures. He speaks about how he has been doing various concentration and meditative exercises, but perhaps he is consistently pushing away the experience of being active in steering the intuitive flow.

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 8:06 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 3:03 pm (sometimes I wonder whether it would have been helpful for Steiner to include some such examples)

3/ Steiner probably could have chosen some words better, who knows. One default thinking habit is to isolate a single sentence or paragraph from the whole 'thought-organism' in which it is found. That is a necessary step for turning artistic/imaginative expression of inner movements (second-order) into informational content (first-order). It's an inner movement that we all do to functionally navigate the sensory world. This movement carries over into our interaction with spiritual texts as well. We have to admit it's a lot easier to interact with the text in this way and get a 'grasp' on what is being communicated.

As these posts keep dripping with a soul quality opposite to humility, I remind of what Steiner warned about, for example here:

There is no need for us to go down the route of fanaticism, 'fighting for the spirit' in the worst possible way. Anthroposophy was never intended to be a dogmatic religion, to dwell in endless bickering of doctrinal points or to attack fellow spiritual seekers and their "soul qualities" because we don't like (and probably don't fully understand) the way they speak about inner realities.

It's blindingly obvious how this route hampers true inner development and undermines the Spirit of the Anthroposophical path. One need only look at how unproductive your posts are becoming, even though you have proven to possess the inner potential to make them much more. If there is truly some issue with my remark that such examples would have been helpful, you should be able to communicate it in a much more reasoned and impersonal manner.